The Frodo Franchise by Kristin Thompson
 
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July 13 : 2008

Analysis of the Shore score, now with excerpts

TheOneRing.net and Doug Adams’ website have pointed to a new resource for lovers of Howard Shore’s music for the LOTR trilogy. Some time back I posted a link to “The Annotated Score,” a series of analyses by Adams to accompany the three boxed sets of CDs with the complete, extended version soundtracks. At that point the analyses were only available as .pdfs.

Now those same analyses are available in .html form on a new website, “The Music of The Lord of the Rings.” A bigger difference is that the site’s owner, John Jennette, has put in links to excerpts from the soundtracks, broken down into several categories: Analysis, Themes & Motifs, Texts, Instruments, and Performers. Check out the differences between, say, the “hymn” and “lullaby” versions of the Shire theme. It’s a big site, and I’m sure one could get sucked into hours and hours of entertaining enlightenment.

Adams describes Jennette’s site as having started out as “a school assignment.” I’m not sure whether Jennette was the assigner or the assignee of that project. Either way, it’s a terrific resource.

By the way, last week Adams posted an update concerning the current progress of his book on the trilogy’s music. It’s anticipated to be released in the fourth quarter of this year. Adams still has not announced what publisher will bring it out. I’m looking forward to finding out where the book fits into the overall LOTR franchise–which still continues, if at a slower pace.

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    The Frodo Franchise
    by Kristin Thompson

    US flagbuy at best price

    Canadian flagbuy at best price

    UK flagbuy at best price

    Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
    hardcover 978-0-520-24774-1
    421 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 12 color illustrations; 36 b/w illustrations; 1 map; 1 table

    “Once in a lifetime.”
    The phrase comes up over and over from the people who worked on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. The film’s 17 Oscars, record-setting earnings, huge fan base, and hundreds of ancillary products attest to its importance and to the fact that Rings is far more than a film. Its makers seized a crucial moment in Hollywood—the special effects digital revolution plus the rise of “infotainment” and the Internet—to satisfy the trilogy’s fans while fostering a huge new international audience. The resulting franchise of franchises has earned billions of dollars to date with no end in sight.

    Kristin Thompson interviewed 76 people to examine the movie’s scripting and design and the new technologies deployed to produce the films, video games, and DVDs. She demonstrates the impact Rings had on the companies that made it, on the fantasy genre, on New Zealand, and on independent cinema. In fast-paced, compulsively readable prose, she affirms Jackson’s Rings as one the most important films ever made.

    The Frodo Franchise

    cover of Penguin Books’ (NZ) edition of The Frodo Franchise, published September 2007. The tiny subtitle reads: “How ‘The Lord of the Rings’ became a Hollywood blockbuster and put New Zealand on the map.”